Posted
by
CowboyNealon Friday May 12, 2006 @03:27AM
from the still-haven't-found-what-i'm-looking-for dept.

mresolver writes "University of Chicago students have once again emerged from the library after a long winter to participate in the world's largest scavenger hunt. The multiple day event is famous for the working breeder reactor that students managed to build during the 1999 hunt. This year, the official list (PDF) includes a superconductor, working wood refrigerator, hot air balloon made to Montgolfier specifications, one-way funhouse mirror, and a walk-in Kaleidoscope."

Should I say it? I'll be dammed if someone didn't take the same tours that I did. It's sort of interesting to go on two different tours and have them both point out a library that has a book bound in skin. It's not even like there were 1000 other things that happened in this place that weren't more interesting. Too bad it's not a public library and you have to pay a yearly fee to use it. Pretty interesting story too. A psycho killer wrote a book and read it. Realizing at how deranged he was he had his s

That is one line... you forgot the <BR> tags.I could point some other errors. Like that it might be WinMain, that is might be written in C and throw does not work there. the program uses "exit" instead of return. or it returns a error exit code instead of 0 (0 is assumed "ok" mostly for unix programs) .

safer would have been:{}

But then there is still point 10 in the list. That is the real hard part.

1)10 PRINT "I OWNZ JOO!"20 GOTO 102) *dons ninja suit*3) cnn.com?5) How many points is this worth?6) There is a lime green type of nuclear duct tape. I have some lying around somewhere....10) C'mon! These entries are supposed to be possible!

B1. Ponies!B2. Desktop Cold Fusion, the energy of the Future!B3. Gray Goo.B4. Profit!B5. AI Based dust collecting overloards.B6. A working automobile metaphore.B7. An actual first post.B8. An editor who actually reads the articles before posting them.

Ok, most of this list was harmless fun. But how dare they violate the valuable IP of patent #6,368,227 [uspto.gov]? Don't bother letting these hardened criminals rot in jail- just shoot them for their crimes against humanity.

He did it deliberately to show his child how the patent system worked, and it demonstrated that the patent system is a mockery. I don't think he has any plans to sue anyone and stop them from swinging sideways.

Ok, most of this list was harmless fun. But how dare they violate the valuable IP of patent #6,368,227? Don't bother letting these hardened criminals rot in jail- just shoot them for their crimes against humanity.

I have prior art to this patent [uspto.gov] dating back to 1982 or before that.

We used this mode of swinging in the two swings made of rubber tires hanging next to each other outside of this house [eniro.se], effectively making them into bumper cars. The object was to swing into the other guy until he couldn't take it a

There is actually a interesting history behind that patent. It was subject to a "director" ordered reexamination, which means that the USPTO itself thought the patent was so bad that it had to be withdrawn and prosecuted again. Director ordered reexaminations are incredibly rare, particularly when there isn't a lot of money at stake.

As the patented swinging method had been long known in the art, the USPTO invalidated all claims of the patent (as it should have the first time around), rendering it unenforceable. Because a patent with no claims is worthless, its owner allowed it to expire on 5/10/2006 by nonpayment of issue fees.

So i'm going to visit my friend at U of C this weekend, and she says, "oh, this was a good week to come, you will get to participate in the scav hunt." obviously, i figure, "hmm, this would be fun for a short while." Then... i see this article. "damn, this is gonna be hard." but compared to Centurix's list up there, this is a walk in the park. sure anyone can find things like "2. DNA From a) Bill Gates b) Linus Torvalds c) Larry Ellison" and "9. A travelling salesman who understands non-deterministic polynomial time" but if i was able to find something like "10. A girlfriend" do you really think i would be writing this at 4:56, come on, at least make it a realistic list.

In the future, before insulting someone else's intelligence, ensure that you understand the post you are criticising. He clearly stated that the real list was bad enough, but at least not as hard as the spoof list.

Geocaching isn't really a scavenger hunt, it's more of a treasure hunt. In any event, it's not like other people in other countries are prevented from having their own scavenger hunts -- certainly not in the same way that, say, a Japanese baseball team is prevented from playing in the MLB.

And it's not like the UoChi organizers decreed that theirs is the world's biggest scavenger hunt. Even if they did, I'm sure they wouldn't have a problem with not calling it that should someone prove another scavenger hunt to be larger.

Sure, there's some hubris involved with calling the MLB championship the World Series, but when the Series was initiated, it was without a doubt the world championship by default.

153. Sending Flora to your mother on Mother's Day is so played out. This year, she wants fauna. [4 points]...183. A pet bee on a string. Do not conflate with Item #228. [3 points]

don't the rules state that you cant have any animals...?

Rule 11.Items. Most items remain the property of the team that secured it except for the items that explicitly call for surrender. Furthermore, no items should use any living, non-human animals|think S.P.C.A.guidelines.

The key is the line, "Think S.P.C.A guidelines." I don't know the guidlines all that well, but my understanding is that bees are not considered worth protecting. At any rate, the enforcement of the list rules is done by our ORCSA advisor, who checks the List to make sure we're not doing anything dangerous/illegal. I'm not sure where exactly they would draw the line, but it appears to be somewhere between insects and mammals.OTOH, the story I've heard from judges older than myself is that the original source

Nowhere in that line does it say "live pet bee on a string". It could easily be a dead bee on a string. I don't think that a "pet" necessarily implies that the object is alive: think pet rock, etc.

Actually, according to rule #11 in their official rules [uchicago.edu], "no items should use any living, non-human animals". So I guess a deceased bee (who must ipso-facto be not a bee) is the only option.

Every fall, the freshman engineering class at Queen's University [queensu.ca] is sent on a scavenger hunt. Over the years, in addition to thunder mugs many "large" items were turned in, but even a the great lakes lake freighter that someone moored near campus isn't the biggest. The greatest bit of scavenge ever turned in was the United States of America. Apparently one of the frosh had a parent with connections to the Carter administration and they got the White House to send a document handing over the USA for one ho